Integrated circuit (IC) chip cards are increasingly utilized as transaction cards for payment in conjunction with a given transaction (e.g. credit cards, debit cards and stored value cards). In that regard, card issuer payment institutions issue IC chip transaction cards to customers that each have a corresponding specific customer payment account administered by or on behalf of the card issuer. In conjunction with the provision of IC chip transaction cards, IC chips are typically provided to a card fabricator that incorporates the IC chips into IC chip cards. The IC chips may be incorporated in transaction cards for contact and/or non-contact interface with transaction card readers.
Recently, payment objects (i.e. objects other than transaction cards) have been proposed that include an IC chip encoded with data associated with a specific payment account administered by or on behalf of a payment institution, wherein the payment objects may be utilized to complete a given transaction. In conjunction with such products, IC chips are typically incorporated in to and thereby fixedly interconnected to card bodies (e.g. an ID-1 sized card as specified in ISO/IEC 7810 standards) for automated handling, including automated handling for encoding of personalization data (i.e. account-specific data) in to the IC chips. In turn, the card bodies may be provided (e.g. scored) to have a preconfigured breakout portion that includes a portion of the card body and a corresponding IC chip and interconnected antenna, and that may be separated from the rest of the corresponding card body after automated handling and prior to incorporation into a payment object. The utilization of card bodies and the separation of breakout portions entails both material and production costs, as well as manufacturing complexities.